Parents, teachers prep for annual school supplies shopping

For Kim Martin, the annual back-to-school shopping trip is time consuming and laborious.

"But it's part of the process," she said. "This is our third stop, and hopefully our last one."

Martin brought her kids, Ellason and Grant, along with her on the supplies shopping trip on a Tuesday. Both attend Saint Wendel Catholic School. Ellason will be a kindergartner, Grant a sixth grader.

"Do they have toys here?" Grant said as they walked the aisles of Staples.

"No toys here," his mom said.

Martin said she had spent roughly $180 at Walmart and $45 at Target earlier that day.

"We're hoping to get the remaining amount at Staples," she said.

Her biggest struggle has been finding the right brands for crayons, watercolors and other items on both kids' lists.

"They're very specific on what they want. For example my daughter needs an eight-crayon Crayola box," she said. "But you can't find the eight, so would it really be OK if I just got the 16?"

Nikki Raymond is getting thrifty with her kids' back-to-school lists, reusing some of the lightly used materials from last school year.

"I looked through my son's notebooks and every single one of them only had a few pages written on them," she said via Facebook comment. "I think I'm going to cut them out and resend the notebooks. It's crazy expensive, especially if you're on a strict budget. Plus school clothes, ziplock bags, dry erasers, printer paper plus your regular school supplies all adds up quick."

Several moms agreed with this idea, saying their kids often finish the school year with unused items.

"I did that with our notebooks this year," Amanda Fillmore said via Facebook.

Teachers, according to Stockwell third grade teacher Lisa Truelove, never stop feeling the stress of having well-stocked classrooms.

"It's really an ongoing thing, it's all year long … in fact I was going to go through the ads later and (found) out where to get copy paper at a good price," she said.

Truelove also has a daughter enrolled in Caste High School.

"My daughter has had to buy a scientific calculator, and we have to have Internet and computers at home for them to do work on," she said.

While costs for school supplies haven't risen greatly, prices go up with the child's grade, she said.

Despite these costs, Truelove and her fellow teachers try to keep costs down by finding new ways to save resources and teach children. Printed papers are always doublesided, and teachers try to integrate individual whiteboards into lectures.

"That's a whole lot more fun for the kids anyway," she said. "Kids bring in white board markers and they use the white boards."

Many things, such as the white board markers, sharpeners and pencils, aren't always provided by the school because the funding simply isn't there, she said.

"I buy a lot for my classroom. (Teachers) buy things like paper, pencils and things like that. It ranges. It's easily a pretty high amount. I think most people would be surprised," she said. "We're buying things the school doesn't have available."

When brainstorming their lists for the kids, Truelove said she and her other teachers limit the lists only to things that the kids will use, and that, no matter what, kids will not go without their pencils, pens and papers each year.

"You won't go in and find kids without the supplies they need. The teachers will help provide for them," she said.

Marsha Jackson, chief communications officer for the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, said EVSC has worked over the years to take brand names off their school supply lists.

"When my kids were in school, it was this brand or this tall by this wide," she said.

In order to work with more parents' budgets, she said they have since tried to expand and widen their range of brands, sizes and styles of school supplies.

Walter Lambert, director of secondary curriculum and instruction for the Warrick County School Corp., said school lists in his district are generated based on the need of the classroom in each grade level and not all items are requirements.

"Most everybody has the same things on the lists, but you get some differences in upper grades," he said. "They do a really good job making sure every one gets what they need."

Lambert said he has yet to have parents push back and complain directly about school supply lists, but if that happens, the complaints will be addressed.

"We already know parents have to pay for textbook rentals, and we know not every kid is going to be able to walk into school with everything on that list," he said. "We try to keep those prices in line."

Both said that once school gets a little closer, churches in the area will start offering services for lower-income families to get all school supplies needed for the school year.

"Several churches gather materials to fill backpacks," he said.

Theresa Berendes, principal at Resurrection Catholic School, said her school started a new program this year to allow parents to go online and customize a backpack full of supplies to be delivered to their doorsteps.

"If you go online and scissors are on the pack and you already have scissors, you can eliminate scissors," she said. "We hadn't found anybody before where you can customize your packs, probably one-fourth of our parents use it."

All agree though that no child will go without the necessary supplies for the school year.

"We're going to figure a way to make sure kids have what they need and get a good education and make due in whatever way possible," Lambert said.

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